Ex-Nokia Exec Anssi Vanjoki : Acquisition “Shameful, But Unavoidable”
Microsoft had recently acquired Nokia which seemed like a major win for Nokia, but it seems that not everyone feels that way, especially since Microsoft has no plans to keep the Nokia brand around once the deal is complete. Speaking to The Verge, Anssi Vanjoki, the man who would have been Nokia’s CEO, felt that the deal was in his own opinion, “shameful, but unavoidable”.
Vanjoki was apparently being groomed for the CEO post himself, but eventually Microsoft’s Elop was installed as the first non-Finnish CEO of Nokia. He eventually left the company.
“This is a complete failure of chosen strategy and its implementation,” he said. As a true patriot, he added that he hopes Microsoft can make “it work” for the sake of Finland.
Needless to say, there may be some bruised egos involved, but Vanjoki really isn’t saying anything that countless Nokia fans and industry watchers weren’t saying all along. Elop’s and to some extent Ballmer’s Windows Phone strategy did not work very well. But to be fair, Nokia was in a world of trouble a long time before Elop took the helm, as it was focused on Symbian for way too long, without much of an alternative strategy.
